Founders in Focus Part 2: Tyler Sweatt, Josh Lospinoso + Troy Demmer (Recorded @ Manifest: Demo Day)

Lauren Bedula 0:00 Welcome back to Building the Base. Hondo Geurts and Lauren Bedula here for Episode Two within our special series recording live from Manifest: Demo Day. Hondo Geurts 0:09 So for those of you who listened to the last episode, we featured a number of founders who are here with some quick hitting facts, so you get to know them and get to be exposed to all the interesting folks now playing in the national security space. Lauren Bedula 0:22 So with that, let's dive in. All right, we're here now with Tyler Sweatt, CEO of Second Front, an important defense tech player and, frankly, enabler in the space. So Tyler, thanks so much for joining us. Tyler Sweatt 0:40 Heck yeah, I am super flattered to be here, guys. Hondo Geurts 0:42 Hey, Tyler, you've been a kind of force the nature and in this world back, even since I think we first butted heads, maybe in the Naval X early years. What were you born this way? Did somebody beat up as a kid or what got you so fired up to drive change? Tyler Sweatt 0:42 It's funny, right? You hear, everybody's got the story of, you know, I was in uniform and things didn't work. And, you know, I've got that story, but it's just a, I like hard problems and stuff that matters, and I kept getting pulled back, right? Tried to go and do some work in pharmaceutical and finance, and just it wasn't as fulfilling for me. And so, you know, it's my rock. If this is a Sisyphean task, is I'm gonna go try to drive change in, you know, defense and national security. Lauren Bedula 1:31 Love it. So tell us about what you're doing right now with Second Front and vision for the company, why you're so passionate about it? Tyler Sweatt 1:38 Yeah. So look, I've been what, 20 years in the industry now, counting time and service, and I think if we get what we're doing at Second Front right, it'll be the most impactful thing I've ever done for national security by an order of magnitude. And that's because all of the non sexy, all of the non cool work that is required to make software run where it's needed for mission. That is the stuff that kills innovation. It's the stuff that kills programs. It's time, it's money, it's people. We rip all that out so we end up being picks and shovels for software defined warfare, which allows us to enable all of these unbelievable companies and to take advantage of all this private capital that's coming in, and it's to effectively build a marketplace for defense of national security. Hondo Geurts 2:27 So I'm actually hesitant asking this, because you're usually pretty vocal about telling DoD leadership where they need to change, but what you're seeing lately, I think, you know, has been positive momentum over the last couple of years. But where do we still need to make some fundamental changes? If you were talking to senior DoD leadership, what are the things that would enable us to kind of accelerate through the momentum we've gained and really get at this at scale? Tyler Sweatt 2:55 Yeah, I think we've done a good job in you know, call it DoD and the IC of having operational leaders. When we think about COCOMS, we think about mission centers, stuff like that. We've done a terrible job of technical leadership. We have technical talent that's sort of dispersed around, but then it's up to the community to, like, figure out, oh, there's a Justin in the Navy and, like, a Leo in the Army. But if you don't know, you don't know how to go find them. What I say to every time, whether it's someone in the building, it's someone on the hill, is we talk about wanting to engage with commercial technology, wanting to engage with private markets, wanting to bring in emerging tech and all of that. Who's the technical leader in the department that owns that opinionation and relationship and the conformance to the policy directors and memos that are out, and there's no maybe it's cyber come here, or DISA here, DoD CIO or a subordinate, that's a recipe for disaster. So it's not, you know, don't go create a new organization. It's a simple that there. Somebody has to if it matters, someone has to own it. Lauren Bedula 4:02 That's great advice. And you are, I think, known for bringing different communities together to get things done. Can you talk about the importance of, like, translating between the community? You have the tech community at the table. How do they understand mission, any best practices in your experience? Tyler Sweatt 4:19 Yeah, it's probably my favorite part of the job. Is like you get to just see the best of and the most passionate of you know, to your point, technologists and you know, operators and capital allocators and regulators and everything in between, all these people who are super passionate about the mission, what they normally struggle with, and I used to as well, is not empathy in the traditional way, but empathy in the like being empathetic to the reality of the other person. And what is their learned experience? What is their vocabulary? What are their the cultural rituals and sort of slowing everybody down a little bit and then just finding stories. It's like, I talk a lot about like, getting your car inspected. Like, hey, if you drove from Virginia to California, and every time you crossed a county line, you had to go get your car re inspected, you'd want to just run into the ocean. Like, that's how we do software in the US government, right? It's psychotic, and everybody can understand that. They're like, oh, like, you don't need buzzwords or duty language or anything. And so that's what I try to do, is try to find places like that, and then get good people together and get out of the way. Hondo Geurts 5:35 Yeah, but it's hard work, right? It's a struggle every day. I mean, you're, you're, how do you keep resilient? I mean, you're always upbeat. Every time we get together, we're, you know, fired up to go take on the next. What do you advice you have for staying upbeat in in kind of, some of these long haul it's not going to change overnight. Kind of situations where, whether you're a founder or or somewhere else in this system. Tyler Sweatt 6:01 Yeah, I mean, I think there's two sides. One, like, you've heard this before, like, lift heavy things, right? Like, before the sun comes up, I have moved a ton of weight every morning. That gives me a little bit of Zen. And the second is, like, choose how you're gonna lose, right? Like, I refuse to lose because I quit. I'm happy to get beat. I'm happy for mission to shift. I will not be the reason we lose which means every day I gotta shoot out of bed, fired up like the Kool Aid man, ready to just hit a wall and just go for it. Hondo Geurts 6:32 Do you think, you know you're an example, or, I think more and more veterans kind of becoming founders, or veterans getting out and wanting to go drive change. Do you see that as a trend that's expanding? And if so, what advice would you have for veterans out there who, yeah, who are frustrated or have the entrepreneurial bug or just want to, you know, support the mission from a different foxhole? Tyler Sweatt 6:57 Yeah. I mean, you think about, like, the attributes you look for in, you know, an early stage founder, operator, kind of the things you find in a veteran or, like a former d1 athlete, right? Can do a bunch of work when no one's looking. Don't really have an ego, you know, not worried about title or really worried about outcome. So I think it's good. I think, you know what I tell people, and I try to spend as much time as I possibly can, taking almost any call I get introduced to on Hey, so and so's leaving the department. They want to get into tech. Hey, they're leaving this agency. They want to get into tech, right? I think one is everybody who's already out like you owe it to the next generation up, put some bread crumbs down and help. And then those coming up is just recognize that there's gonna be wood to chow, right? This isn't a like, you've made it and it's there. Like, the reason some of the economic models exist and some of the upside exists is because it's hard, not because it's, you know, a minus 100 parlay, and you can just hit it. So I think that's the that plus there's no script, right? That's the one place I'll see, I'll see veterans sometimes struggle is there's not, and I know most veterans, you know, there's a hierarchy, but it's really permeable at the operational and tactical level. I think sometimes that hierarchy is a little bit of like a safety valve, and that just doesn't exist, right? Like, titles change, roles change. I never plan to be in the role I'm in. Right? Like, it just weirdly happened. You've got to be comfortable with, like, a lot of permeability, and that is self confidence, more often than not. That isn't confidence in the organization. Like, you've got to be all right, just changing jerseys for whatever the team needs. Yeah, you can get that anything. Hondo Geurts 8:44 Was there enough humility to learn that thing? Yeah? Or not, right? Tyler Sweatt 8:47 Oh, yeah. I mean, all of us are kept sitting out there talking with a couple CEOs. We're in the same CEO like group on CEO coaching, and we have this joke that, like we won't talk about what happens in the groups, because, you know, we want everyone to know, we've to think we know what we're talking about. We're like CEO therapy groups together, because none of us know. Lauren Bedula 9:08 There are a lot of VCs investors here. What do you think the next five years will look like in a space we were talking about when they got into this, there wasn't much here, and now there's so much interest. You think it'll keep growing? Tyler Sweatt 9:19 Yeah, that's a really good question. Um, I don't know if I hope it keeps growing, right? Like I want it to... I'm a big free markets guy, right? Like I want it, I want to get to some equilibrium where there's good capital. My concern on it just going up into the right is you'll have maybe ill informed like, dare I say, bad capital coming in, which I think will have some downward coefficient that we won't see immediately, right? And that's the part that makes me really, really worried, conversely, right? If you've got the wrong capital in early it's sending the wrong signals to the community, and if the result isn't more capability is trying to come into the market, then it almost doesn't matter. So I don't know if it's an answer, but no, that's somewhere in the middle. Lauren Bedula 10:08 Very interesting perspective with that. Tyler, thank you for taking time out of this busy dish and your busy schedule in general. You know, we love chatting with you, so we had to make it official on the show. Tyler Sweatt 10:18 Yeah, so happy to be here, huge fans guys, so thanks for everything you do. Lauren Bedula 10:28 We're here now with Josh Lospinoso, who is one of the co founders and CEO of Shift5, a really cool company operating in the cyber OT space, operational technology. So Josh, thanks so much for joining us. Josh Lospinoso 10:40 Thank you so much. Yeah, it's great to be here. Hondo Geurts 10:42 So Josh, besides your little high school at West Point, we've had a long debate here about are founders, made or born. What's your story? Like, what what got you? Did you always want to be a founder, or did it just happen upon you? What's your story? Josh Lospinoso 10:57 Yeah, you know, I think, like most things in the universe, it's a little bit of both, probably nature and nurture. You know, I think I always grew up around entrepreneurs. My dad ran a small HVAC business growing up, and there was something about him having that owner mentality and building that I just always found really intoxicating, and I had a couple of really great mentors through West Point in grad school who had taken an entrepreneurial path after leaving service, I actually had the opportunity to co found a company when I was at Oxford on on loan from the Army called Red Owl. And so was able to build, like, this sort of technical team and product around that. And I just, I always knew that that was the the right context for me, and yeah, and then just surrounding yourself with, with with great like people that are willing to pay it forward, is just essential, like, I don't No one. No one is like, born with the DNA to know exactly how to run a business. It's just such a hard, impossible task. You know you're always learning every day. Lauren Bedula 12:15 And what drove you to serve as well? What is it about mission and operating in the defense space thatcaught your attention? Josh Lospinoso 12:23 Yeah, you know, it's funny. I mean, I remember one of my econometrics professors at West Point, like, studied this problem pretty extensively. And you know, because what you find is, in the United States, you have almost these like warrior tribes, like, where a third to a half of a graduating class in high school will go to serve in the military. I grew up in northern New Jersey, where you if you tell people, like, hey, like, I'm gonna join the Army, or like, I want to, you know, they kind of look at you funny. Like, did you do? You know what happens? But when I, when I was a freshman in high school, September 11, happened, I grew up, you know, 30 minutes away from the city. You know, I'm not going to pretend like I had some sort of nuanced, like, geopolitical position on the matter, but it just, it felt like, you know, this country was attacked. And, you know, like, I'm 17. You know me 17 here pretty shortly, like, I been thinking about service maybe. And I, you know, just wanted to stand up and serve in that way. Lauren Bedula 13:32 Wow. And then two successful companies on the cyber security side, like, what drove you to cyber security? Josh Lospinoso 13:39 The honest answer is, I wanted to live with my wife. So I did. I did a Rhodes scholarship out of out of West Point. So I was at Oxford for three years, doing a PhD, while Danielle was in med school. And then the Army, you know, in their HRC flexibility, or their human resources flexibility to unique circumstances, said that I needed to go to Ranger School and do through the whole sort of catch up on the pipeline. And so fast forward five years from graduating West Point, I still hadn't been living with my then wife, Danielle, and I went to the, you know, infantry branch manager. I said, Hey, like, she's in San Antonio. How do I get to San Antonio? She's like, you don't, you know? And I said, Well, what jobs are to San Antonio? Said, Well, you did, like, computer stuff in the university. I was like, You're gonna have to be more specific. And he said, That's the nerd answer. Like, you know, you should, you should go check out the Cyber Command thing. So I did, and got to work at NSA Texas, down in San Antonio, and cut my teeth with National Security Agency, and really just fell in love with cybersecurity, just such a fascinating field. Hondo Geurts 14:47 So let's talk about your your current startup. Maybe give us a couple seconds about that, and kind of why that's you know, you and I met a little while ago, and I got to see the passion about about that. Project. It was, give us a sense of that. Josh Lospinoso 15:03 Shift5 does digital makeovers for Legacy Weapon Systems. So, you know, think about a c1, 30 or B, 52 and arly bird class destroyer, and it's a tremendously impressive weapon systems that are super expensive. They're going to be in service for decades. We talk all about this AI and autonomy, and it's great. I mean, we've got to continue pushing on that stuff. But these old, these old dogs, can learn some new tricks. And so we've been, you know, building hardware, software that allows the community, government folks, uniform folks, contractor community to develop capabilities, whether those are for preventive, predictive maintenance, for cybersecurity alerting and monitoring, GPS, spoofing, and builds those capabilities back home in a server environment with tons of operational Data, test them and then ship them to the edge, so that you can do things like keeping MQ nine safe from cyber attack and hijacking what have you. This is really important mission. I know we fell into it because we, when we were in uniform, we're on the other side of that cybersecurity equation. We were investigating cybersecurity issues on these platforms. Really scary stuff there. There's a GAO report that came out in 2018 talking about how pervasive this issue is, I know a flavor of nerdy RB, if you ever watch Battlestar Galactica, you know, from the 70s, or the or the reboot, or or, you know, animal stuff, read, this is book. You know, these are fiction, but like, they're not theoretical anymore, if that makes sense. And so we just, we identify that this class of problems exists where these super important weapon systems are out there doing mission, but it's maddeningly difficult for us to apply all the super smart technologists that are doing all these great things on the IT domain with new builds of weapon systems like we need To open this multi trillion dollar asset base up to those smart folks to solve problems. Lauren Bedula 17:25 So what would you tell DoD leadership today that they need to know about this problem that you solve and that you've targeted here? Josh Lospinoso 17:34 Yeah, it's funny. It was talking to a reporter earlier today, and I think we've, we've had a little bit of a more nuanced like experience with DoD procurement than a lot of defense tech companies have, honestly, yeah, and that has been every single program office that I've interacted with, Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, base force, incredibly smart, dedicated, mission driven folks that just want to do the right thing. They really care about the war fighter, and they really just want to solve problems. They're incredibly demanding customers, and it will hold you to account. But when you do great work for them, you solve problems for them, they will move mountains, right? Like I we talk a lot about defense, acquisition reform in this and that we're in a little bit of a unique space that we're, you know, we're modding existing platforms. But in my experience, when you find product market fit, like you solve problems for these customers, money is not the problem, requirements are not the problem. Speed is not the problem. They will move. And so, you know, I would, you know, for DoD leaders, I guess distilling it down, I would say, Listen, we in this community, in the defense Tech, we made a lot of noise, and I think directionally, that noise is pushing us in the right direction. I think that autonomy attritable drones, AI, faster software deployments. All these are like just, I think, very hard argument. These aren't good directions to go into. I would say, do all that. But also, let's champion the examples of, I mean, I'll tell you, you know, NAVAIR right with the Osprey. I mean, my gosh, that that platform's had so many, you know, tragic accidents happen. 65 service members have died on on the Ospreys because non combat related. There are some incredibly smart folks at NAVAIR that, like, don't sleep at night because they just, they're just like, this is this is this is inexcusable. Is my job to keep these servers member safe, and they have embraced us and the tech community to try to, like, solve this problem, and we're gonna solve it together, you know? And when that happens, I feel like championing all the great new procurements on all the fancy new AI and autonomy and all. Stuff. But also, like lifting up the people that found a way to embrace the tech community on these, you know, other very significant problems, which, by the way, like 98% of the defense budget is going towards these, these other systems, like, I think, finding that nuance, finding that balance between these two worlds, you know, don't lose sight of, don't lose sight of the that, that fact. Hondo Geurts 20:24 So Josh, I think out of all the guests we've had today, at least three of them have been on red eyes. You know, maybe all of them, one gotta end up four in the morning. I think he just flew back from Hawaii. You know, in this world that you're living in tons of challenges, tons of people saying it can't be done. Tons of people saying, you know, why don't you go do this other thing? How do you personally deal with challenge, you know, and keep resilient and keep your energy up. And how do you instill that across your team? Josh Lospinoso 20:53 Yeah, boy. Um, well, I guess first, from a personal perspective, um, there's, there's a point at which, I think the combination of your personal investment in an endeavor, the people that you've convinced to leave very nice, stable, lucrative, promising careers and jobs to come join this crazy pirate ship, and real money, like, you know, we've raised over $100 million at this point. This is, like, teasers, pensions. This is, you know, endowments for for state schools. I mean, this is, you know, I think the combination of all of those things should give a founding team a sense of tremendous responsibility with the privilege that you've you've gotten to do something meaningful with these resources that should get you through the bad days, right? And there's that, you know, sort of grit and determination of don't quit, that I think most folks who've served in the military kind of get, whether that's from your basic training or your ranger school or, like, whatever. I think that is really important. And it's, you know, I think it's a contrition for a reason, like the mission. It really matters, and especially, you know, for us, we hire a lot of veterans. Like one in five of us is, is has military service, and this mission really matters. Like, you know, a lot of the folks we employ on our like data science team, they could go probably make two to three times as much working at like Facebook, getting people to click on ads, right? Or they apply those very same data science skills to figuring out when phase and amplitude shift on a gearbox vibration is an indication that it's gonna have a catastrophic failure. And you're saving people's lives, right? Like, I think that has been a really powerful motivator of getting people to come join the team, as well as getting people to stay, because it's not easy. I mean, like, you know, it's, it's, it's a really, really all in activity, being, being at a, at a venture backed startup, because time is your enemy, and you know, every moment counts. Hondo Geurts 23:21 What would you say to other veterans that are thinking of I mean, I'd hadn't really put the two together that way of veterans experience and and founder experience and, and at this demo days, we're seeing a lot of them here. You think that's a untapped resource that that that the startup community could take more advantage of? Josh Lospinoso 23:42 Hugely, hugely, yeah, I think it's, you know, there's veterans are very special people. You know, it it takes a special kind of person to want to do that job. You know, sign up and, you know, literally being willing to lay your life down on the line for something that you believe in, and knowing full well what that lifestyle is like takes a special kind of person, I would say, you know, for for veterans that are thinking about doing something entrepreneurial, whether that's starting your own company or joining a startup or what have you I think you know my my two pieces of advice would be one, do it, because if you have that inclination, you know you have that itch, it will never go away like you just you have to try it. And the second is, I think, approach it with a sense of confidence, but also humility, because there are so many things you will find from your military service that will really propel you in those endeavors on the outside, the grit, the determination, the mission orientation, the just sort of like get it done, attitude you're like, sort of the ease with which you make really deep, meaningful relationships with the folks around you when you're going through. To painful and uncomfortable experiences, like is so perfect for this environment, but also have humility, right? Especially if you're coming into it after a 1015, 2030, year career, there are parts of what you've done which are above and beyond the experiences of like fortune 500 executives, right? The scale and scope and responsibility of the amount of assets and the people and the situations that you're in, like, pale in comparison. But there are also things that you have no context for, right? Like, like, I don't know just anything to do with finances, for example, right? Or talent acquisition, right is something that, like in most outside of special forces, you know, like, you don't, you show up as a platoon leader in an infantry platoon. It's like, here's your 40 bubbles, you know. I mean, you're not, you're not having to hire and manage, if I like, it's different. The HR side of it's different. And, yeah, and then just like, you know, just be willing to, like, continue cultivating mentors, you know. And I feel like that's the most important part of what creates inertia within these communities. And, you know, frankly, like, I will, I will call out, you know, I've had a lot of privilege in the ease with which mentors have found me. I've never been in a situation in my life where I didn't have a half dozen folks that were 1020, 30 years older than I was who wanted to take a vested interest in me. Frankly, they all looked a lot like me too, right? And so I think that we in this community need to do a better job of cultivating mentees that maybe don't look like us, because that diversity is going to be so incredibly important in solving the problems that that we have over the next 10 years. And I want to create a crop of like, very diverse founders and successful entrepreneurs so that they can pay it forward to the next generation too. Lauren Bedula 27:00 Wow. So many important thoughts there. Josh, thank you for your service, both in and out of government. It's so fun watching you grow Shift5. Thanks for coming on. We're here now with Troy Demmer, who's co founder and Chief Product Officer at Gecko Robotics. Troy, thanks so much for joining us. Troy Demmer 27:21 Thanks for having me. Hondo Geurts 27:23 So Troy, we often ask founders, how did they kind of get into this? Did you were you born a founder, made a founder, and what got you into the founder game? Troy Demmer 27:34 Yeah, so I'd say I was always had the entrepreneurial bug, even in the early days, always kind of figured out ways to make money to pay my way through school, or, you know, find, find that extra sort of way of, you know, creating something that no one else was thinking about. But I think from a sort of tech scalability side of things that started in 2014 2015 so actually, Gecko was my third startup. So the prior to, you know, just to quickly paint the picture, one was called better speech, and another one was called 360 showings. And, you know, the names kind of implied what they do, but there was actually a little bit of overlap, at least in the last one, which was to contextualize real spaces, so to turn, kind of atoms into bits. I think you know the reality about being a founder and now having the sort of benefit of working at Gecko for 10 years, you have to really love what you do, because if it's not something that is your, you know, obsession, then it's really hard to go through, through the ups and the downs and so you know, the story behind, About behind Gecko is a really cool one, because it started back in, you know, a college dorm room over 10 years ago. My co founder, Jake, we were in the same hall together fraternity, Grove City College and so, you know, also getting to build a company with someone that you trust and know so so much. We were hyper competitive back from college, you know, playing sports, and we're still hyper competitive to this day, against each other and externally as well. And so, you know, we just really felt that, you know, what really drew me into this problem statement specifically, was, you know, the built world. We just didn't fundamentally understand it well enough. And sort of this idea of helping to turn atoms into bits and starting to, you know, just vastly improve the things that we could all physically touch. And, you know, prior to that, I just say to draw the contest, the other two software companies were pure software, purely in the cloud. And I think there's just something that, you know, lacks this tangibility, and there's just something really cool about the hard tech that enables the outcomes we're achieving here with Gecko. I'm sure we'll get into some of those. Lauren Bedula 29:47 And you are clearly passionate about the defense space and national security space. Can you talk a little bit about what drove you as a founder to that market? Troy Demmer 29:55 Yeah, so this was about four years ago. We were purely a commercial. Industrial based company working in energy, manufacturing, critical industries like Mining and Metals, lot of inputs to the defense industrial base. So there's a cool overlap there. But, you know, I, you know, I did take it upon it was sort of like my, sort of, you know, kind of, I would say, passion project that was, you know, sort of just, what can we be doing here. These are some of the most, you know, capable, most expensive to build, expensive to maintain platforms. How do we get more out of them? And so, you know, we felt like we had a decent starting point, but knew nothing. I didn't know of, you know, Federal Acquisitions background. And so it really was just sort of trial by error and learning by doing. But you know, that's, I think, what building a startup ball is all about, like, you know, many of the situations we're thrown into we weren't necessarily prepared for. So I went out and got the first couple contracts, but, you know, really started to then realize, wow, there's like, experts that do this, and how do we start to build a team? And now we're over 50 people strong, just focused on federal use cases. And I think what's really critical is, you know, obviously there's the national security aspect of it, and, you know, helping our war fighter stay safe and come home and, you know, giving them the capability they need to be successful. And, you know, we just really think a lot about, like, how much benefit we can bring to this, to this specific sector. And it's, you know, why we now have a DC office. I spend a lot of my time in DC now, so there's a lot of growth potential ahead. But, you know, we've been able to work on some of the coolest technology out there, from submarines, ships to aircraft. It's something that engages all of us, right? It's a heart it's an interesting problem to work on, and I think that's unified our company quite, quite, quite well. Hondo Geurts 31:44 So Troy, for those who aren't familiar, can you give us a little five seconds on Gecko and how you've kind of taken, I'll call you know, state of the present technology and reflected to this really interesting use case. Troy Demmer 32:00 So at the premise, we turn we diagnose the health of of critical assets, things like steel, concrete, composites. We use, you know, material science to understand, okay, what is the condition of this asset. We're able to see through the walls. We use sensors that we often deploy on things like drones. We built the first proprietary wall climbing robot that could scan through steel. We've now adapted that to do concrete applications. And so we're really figuring out, okay, at any point of the life cycle of an asset, what is its condition? What is its material state? This could be something in the manufacturing line. Could be a defect that arises that needs to be sort of remedied to once it's put into the built world. Now we're sustaining it. Now we're maintaining it. And there's lots of attacks on that, just the usage of the equipment to the environmental factors, et cetera. And so keeping a pulse on how is this asset performing. How do we get the most out of it? How do we extend the life of the life of the asset. How do we invest into that asset from cradle to grave? Hondo Geurts 33:03 So I would expect, I mean, you would think that was something national security, you would worry about. I expect it wasn't all unicorns and ponies trying to kind of break into the federal market. As you said, What would you say to DOD leadership in terms of things that are going well, and things where they could improve, to bring technology like yours and others to the table, better, faster, cheaper? Troy Demmer 33:28 Yeah, well, you know, I mentioned like, you know, we want to work with the DOD, and we were intentional about that, you know, I think it's not for the faint of heart, you know, there's certainly challenges to breaking in, going to market, having the right security posture, having all the frameworks in place to be able to do business with the government. That, being said, we love the defense mission. It's unifying. It, you know, allows us to work on some of the most important problems for our nation, our world and we it's brought us to things like really amazing assets, to be able to not just understand the health of those assets, but help to change the way that they're managed across their life cycle, silos in a ground based strategic nuclear triad, submarines, ships, and we really start to get a sense of, Wow, There's so much opportunity here. How do we bring robots and software to the built world? I think, on the challenges side of things, or what I would say is like, empower the Mavericks. We have found some amazing champions, right? So many that have adopted what we can bring to bear, who worked with us to augment that and deploy it. This technology is ready. And sometimes, you know, the change is not always easy, and finding those change agents inside of the organization, and what we've found is that the information we create can be leveraged within the enterprise, and we want to be able to help make more higher and. Decisions today, we may do things at an asset level. How do you start to cross entire class or a fleet? But sometimes there's challenges along the way. You know, the frozen middle certainly is, is challenging at times to work with, but embrace the Mavericks that you have on your on your teams, because we need those partnerships. And I think on the last point, this has been sort of like it's no fault of the primes, but we work directly with the primes. We're supplying a platform that can help with build and I'll maintain and modernizing our most critical infrastructure a lot of times. On the other side of that is a partner that's actually owns that platform or develop that platform and sells it to the services. The incentives aren't always right, and it's no fault to them. But you know, they get paid to do the work in a cost plus basis, and sometimes that incentive is against we feel like are not always aligned to what we can bring to bear, things like drastic time reduction and span of manufacturing or in sustainment of a ship, as well as the cost side of things. I mean, we're drastically bringing down the cost doing things, you know, in 1/100 of the time, sometimes for 95% cost reduction. That isn't always necessarily incentivized for the primes to work with, but I think what's really encouraging to us, and you know, something that you know, certainly the current, current administration, and and and department, second secretary of Secretary of Defense, has put out new acquisition policies and really using the tools that we've had for a while, but talking about software acquisition pathways and things like that With OTs and other authorities, this can be greatly beneficial to bring these technologies to bear more widely and get them inserted in the right places. Lauren Bedula 36:48 Awesome. And I have one more quick one, which is, you're not the first founder we spoke to today that traveled through the night. How do you stay fresh and always on top of issues in a market like this, especially working such complicated technology. Any advice there? Troy Demmer 37:01 Yeah, it's, it's a great question, I think, you know, it goes to the point that I made earlier, which is, like, when you really love what you do, the days are effortless. You know, 12 hour day a 16 hour a day, red eye flight. It just becomes so worth solving these problems and working hard to because it's all beyond us, you know. And what's really neat is that anything that we're building is beyond a single individual. It's beyond a company we are helping to ensure that, you know, power stays on, that powers are critical, you know, navies and, you know, Air Force, and that the that the assets are in the fight. And so I think just the motivation to solve those problems every day, and the problems are pretty large, they're entangled. They're not necessarily very simplistic. And so just the ability to solve more and more complex problems as we go on, just fuels, fuels my fire, I think, has enabled us to attract the top talent that we have. And you know, it's very motivating to work alongside my peers. Lauren Bedula 38:01 Awesome, love it. And thank you so much, Troy for joining us and for all the work you're doing. Troy Demmer 38:05 Awesome. Great to be here. Thanks. Transcribed by https://otter.ai